Cadets Suspend for 2024

[2000Cadet]

Well it's always nice to wake up to terrible news.

Hope to see them back in 2025.

But this will apparently become the norm for the activity so it is what it is. 

[scheherazadesghost]

1 minute ago, keystone3ply said:

Reminds me of one the stories about the inception of SOA.  The story was that the ATL based Coca-Cola wanted to fully sponsor Spirit but wanted them to field "red" uniform.  But they wanted to field a blue uniform & would up with a partial Delta Airlines sponsorship thus the Delta logo.  Not sure of it's true or a partial truth, but I would have fielded a Coca-Cola red uniform with the vintage bottle on the sleeve.  Would have also passed out free Coke at the souvie trailer. 😆

This is what big contributors expect. And why you have a seasoned development professional managing such relationships. You give them a bit of what they want but not everything, otherwise you sacrifice artistic integrity... which in the end, cheapens the whole relationship. The development pro's job is to educate too.

[cixelsyd]

51 minutes ago, ContraFart said:

I agree that not every group is a monolith, but you can readily predict that whenever finances are brought up, props and electronics being the largest problem is always the focus of the conversation and much of that is driven by a distaste for them from a certain portion of the population. 

Not true.  Plenty of people post that food, fuel and housing are concerns.  But those are more essential costs.

[ContraFart]

3 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:

I've done this before, but to be clear again, here's one of my former np employers. They've been around longer than most drum corps and funded the most notable modern dance choreographers for decades going back to Martha Graham.

Note that their revenue development model meets or exceeds most drum corps revenue requirements AND they're transparent about where the money is coming from. All contributors are mission-aligned and proud to give their money to ADF. They also have at least one (if not two or three) dedicated salaried professionals working these contributors on a daily basis. Drum corps could start with board members doing this on a volunteer basis, assuming they have the right expertise:

https://americandancefestival.org/thank-you/

This is one of thousands of such examples of the standardized nonprofit arts education/presenter models out there.

Maybe you should make yourself available to sit on a BOD. They could use you 

[Old Guy]

1 hour ago, LabMaster said:

That right there cannot be overstated. Creation of sustainable revenue streams is lacking in many orgs.  Reliance on only a few sources of revenue is not sustainable. Diversify the portfolio.  Expand the BoD’s to expand diversity in fundraising and creativity in fundraising.  It’s what you would do with your personal wealth management, why wouldn’t the same thinking apply to corps financial resources?  Then manage it with smart spending. Live within your means.

People put a lot of hope on BoD’s but my experience tells me that, candidates while willing to help and give advise are not necessarily looking for adding 20h/week to their normal schedule, take huge fundraising responsibility on their own (without much needed help) or donate 20% of their own income. 
 

There are a few. But not as much as people think there is. + with corps not being local anymore, fundraising is much more harder as there is not a bulk of involve people living at the same place to make it happen. 
 

The only thing left is corporate sponsorship but not many pursues this as they don’t know how to do it, they have noting to offer in return (limited visibility), they are shy or they think having a good show come first and then there’s no time left for other objectives/projects. 

[dbc03]

11 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:

As I said on the DCI CEO thread, and will repeat here... you could cut travel expense by touring less, and you could cut housing expense by recruiting locally.  These ideas have already been dismissed.  Less people will march under those circumstances, and then we WILL have a revenue problem.

We need food.

So what is left? 

Touring less also means less income from shows, there's probably still a net benefit to touring less, but there are tradeoffs. Fewer shows means fewer fans coming in to an activity already struggling to keep up with other activities that are more broadly accessible.

I'm not convinced that you could fill that many corps with locals to the point of reducing housing costs (I'm assuming you're implying that the kids will stay at home and travel to rehearsals daily themselves). High school marching band has filled the niche that local drum corps once filled and I don't think there is enough desire for a summer version in a small enough geographic footprint to maintain corps that don't provide housing.

While careful budgeting is certainly needed to try to reduce costs increasing revenue is equally if not more important. There is a limit on how much budget you can cut and still support a modern drum corps and prices for food, housing, and travel aren't likely to go down, so corps would have to continue cutting and cutting until there's nothing left. Corps will have to get creative and create new revenue streams if they are going to survive. If they don't then the activity will die.

[ContraFart]

2 minutes ago, cixelsyd said:

Not true.  Plenty of people post that food, fuel and housing are concerns.  But those are more essential costs.

But they are hand waved so they can have the argument about the things they don't like.

[OldSnareDrummer]

6 minutes ago, keystone3ply said:

Reminds me of one the stories about the inception of SOA.  The story was that the ATL based Coca-Cola wanted to fully sponsor Spirit but wanted them to field "red" uniform.  But they wanted to field a blue uniform & wound up with a partial Delta Airlines sponsorship thus the Delta logo.  Not sure of it's true or a partial truth, but I would have fielded a Coca-Cola red uniform with the vintage bottle on the sleeve.  Would have also passed out free Coke at the souvie trailer. 😆

No good. When new Coke came along in '85, they would have been drummed out of DCI. 

[JimF-LowBari]

21 minutes ago, ContraFart said:

because the "dinos" who whine about props and electronics are wrong that they are the issue, yet they persist in thinking that if they were gone, that drum corps would magically be fixed. 

Any and all costs are the issue.  I have no idea why you think name calling will help the discussion.

[scheherazadesghost]

1 minute ago, Old Guy said:

People put a lot of hope on BoD’s but my experience tells me that, candidates while willing to help and give advise are not necessarily looking for adding 20h/week to their normal schedule, take huge fundraising responsibility on their own (without much needed help) or donate 20% of their own income. 
 

There are a few. But not as much as people think there is. + with corps not being local anymore, fundraising is much more harder as there is not a bulk of involve people living at the same place to make it happen. 

This is the average BOD, fairly lazy, looking to boost (or whitewash) their for profit resumes with the appearance of volunteerism... then giving what on paper ends up being something like 1 hr a month. Ick. Yeah, nothing comes of that and it's not what the np model was designed for.

I think Boston is a good example of the opposite here. Alum tell me that endless hours of volunteerism were put in to revitalize that org and corps. Look at their board now. It's HUGE! And yes, it takes a monster or two to manage such a large team, but if it's done well, it can be very powerful.